The Death of the Gods

The celebrated sophist, Hekobolis, Court professor of eloquence, had begun to climb the ladder of promotion at the very lowest rungs. He had been a servant attached to the Temple of Astarte at Hieropolis. At sixteen, having stolen some articles of value, he escaped to Constantinople, lived with the dregs of the populace, soaked in every kind of rascality. Later he took to the high-roads, where, roving on ass-back from village to village, he lived from hand to mouth, in company both with respectable pilgrims and with bands of brigands -- sacrificers to Dindymene, that goddess beloved of the people. Finally he reached the school of Proeres the rhetorician, and soon became a teacher of eloquence himself.

During the last years of Constantine the Great, when the Christian religion became fashionable at Court, Hekobolis became a Christian. The clergy showed him sympathy, but Hekobolis (though never inopportunely) changed his form of creed as the wind blew: from Arian he became Orthodox, from Orthodox Arian, and every conversion raised him a step in office.